OFFICIAL Learn About GameMaker’s Future and How We Fit in At Opera (Q&A)

David Batty

Member
I deliver a lot of Gamemaker training to kids and teachers, both online and in schools. The sprite editor makes it so easy for kids to pick up Gamemaker, draw something, and get it working without having to go off and find another application (not that they can install anything in schools) save sprites, import in to Gamemaker and then repeat. A good sprite editor gets them up and running quickly as they don't need to leave the software and add another level of complexity to what they are learning.
 
Will the participants have the authority to speak and ask questions live in the zoom meeting,
or should only those who have questions participate, can we join just to watch the meeting?

We have a GameMaker discord community that has hundreds of people. If we join the zoom meeting, do we have permission to stream it live on an audio channel in our discord community? So that GameMaker lovers in our community can watch this event live, learn more about the roadmap and discuss with each other meanwhile :)

One of the reasons why I asked this is, if I'm not mistaken, I know Zoom has a 100-person limit.
 

Shut

Member
I'll be waiting for the recorded video, hope to see some interesting stuff being discussed about GM's future. I'd join Zoom but I'm afraid I'll find out I'm a cat.
 
I believe there will be lot of people, and if there would be possibility to ask questions, they wouldn't add form for sending them in first post. We gonna be for sure muted and not allowed to share video.
I see. I just wanted to ask because I wasn't sure what kind of thing they were going to do. Thanks for your reply 🙂
As for streaming on a discord audio channel, I won't do this unless I get a reply that says we can do that from an authorized person.
 

Toque

Member
I deliver a lot of Gamemaker training to kids and teachers, both online and in schools. The sprite editor makes it so easy for kids to pick up Gamemaker, draw something, and get it working without having to go off and find another application (not that they can install anything in schools) save sprites, import in to Gamemaker and then repeat. A good sprite editor gets them up and running quickly as they don't need to leave the software and add another level of complexity to what they are learning.
Thats a great point. If education is something they want to focus on.
 

gnysek

Member
I'm ready, even my wife said that she not gonna make a dinner before 6PM GMT, cause for sure I'll be too busy to eat :p
 

rmanthorp

GameMaker Staff
Admin
GameMaker Dev.
Ross, will you be taking questions live from viewers, or will it be more of a one-way interaction?
Chat will be open (as long as we don't have any bad players) so if we have time at the end of the call we might take some chat questions!

Oh and worth noting again that we are planning a followup blog Q&A to go over the answers given in the video and answer more specific questions as best as we can! :)
 
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Elodman

Member
Things are getting hot here today, dudez !

...we'll have the recorded video up for everyone as soon as we can!
Hoping, the Director's cut and IMAP versions -with subtitles on several languages- will be available for order, soon - for Elders, die-hard indies & fans preferably at a price discount!
 

kburkhart84

Firehammer Games
It's going to be a bad time for someone in the world no matter what they do. It looks like they tried to pick the best time for the majority of their audience. I would hazard a guess that they have more customers in the US Hemisphere and Europe area(no offense, I love ALL you people equally), and the time they picked is earlier day for US West Coast while starting into evening for Europe, and getting into night time as you go east across China, India, and eventually Japan and Australia.
 

gnysek

Member
I for sure got some big lag, as people were already saying "Thanks, bye!" while I was still listening to last answer :D
 
I was expecting a longer and more detailed meeting. Even though I got some ideas about the future of GameMaker, I'm still a little bit disappointed. However, it was still very useful to understand GameMaker's future, thanks for organizing such a good event. The future of GameMaker is so promising for me ❤
 

Slyddar

Member
I for sure got some big lag, as people were already saying "Thanks, bye!" while I was still listening to last answer
That's a shame. No problems for me. Congrats on the session guys, it was really well run, and professionally presented. It moved at a nice pace, and the discussion between presenters flowed nicely. Thanks again for the transparency, and for sharing what information you could in this manner.
 

JeffJ

Member
I'm a bit split - on one hand, I am excited, happy and grateful that they even did this in the first place. That is definitely a step in the right direction, and overall, I am hopeful for the future of YYG / GMS, and I want to once again thank you all for doing it. Please keep it up!

On the other hand, a lot of the questions that did get concrete answers weren't really burning questions, and many of the answers for the more burning questions were extremely vague.
I'm also very happy that we're getting IDE plugins, but sad that it's going to take a long, long time.

Anyway, I was taking notes during the call. For those who couldn't join, here's a quick recap of the questions that was covered:

1: Will GMS focus more on 3d?
A: No. Will focus on being the best for 2d.

2: IDE plugins are coming, but internal consolidation needs to happen first. They want to keep it safe and prevent plugins from breaking everything.

3: Inspectors will be added for all asset types, kind of like what they are for sequences, but for everything.

4: Extensions: They're waiting for Esoteric to finish Spine 4.0, support for this will then be added to GMS2. They're also hiring an extension engineer to focus solely on updating the officially supported extensions.

5: They're adding more IDE translations, and want to extend these localizations to include documentation and tutorials.

6: Nextgen console support is in closed beta (PS5 and Xbox Series S/X)

7: Pricing and pricing models: "We're always evaluating"

8: Privacy: GMS2 collects less data and is GDPR compliant

9: Will we be getting more transparent communication?
A: Yes, but more carefully than pre-Playtech - we want to under promise and over deliver

10: Will Opera somehow try and force GX over our heads?
A: No.

11: Will YYG be getting more staff / resources?
A: Yes. (Case in point, as of this writing, they're hiring 4 new positions)

12: Marketplace and overall website will be updated (quite extensively, from the sounds of it)

13: Will 2.3 be getting any more features?
A: Sequences will get even bigger - anything will be "sequencable". Also new features are coming, but they aren't announced publically yet.

14 Any big plans for GMS that you can share?
A: No. YYG should continue to make GMS the best gamemaker it can be. We will continue to lower the barrier of entry for new users. We also want to give you more tools to create games faster and easier.

15: Why did Opera buy YYG?
A: Krystian Kolondra tried several different game engines, and made games with his son. He really liked GMS. They also have ideas for somehow tying GMS with GX, but didn't elaborate.

I'll let you be the judge - what do you think of the answers?

I personally like 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 11, 12 and 13. All of that is good stuff.

9 sounds good on paper, but with a lot of stuff still not announced and clearly going on behind the scenes, time will tell.
14 was really, really vague and didn't really say anything.
15 was cool on a personal level, but didn't really tell us anything - again, really, really vague.

And personally a little frustrated on 8. That was the most non answer of the bunch.

They also didn't touch on the question of whether Opera will allow them (unlike Playtech) to sell support subscription (which would help offset the recurring cost of console development, making them a onetime purchase more realistic).
 
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Evanski

Raccoon Lord
Forum Staff
Moderator
a lot of the questions that did get concrete answers weren't really burning questions, and many of the answers for the more burning questions were extremely vague.
Jeff stole the words from my mouth,
I mean a lot of them were given around the bush answers or dodged, Thats kind of concerning.

I feel like Opera is a good and bad change.
 

gnysek

Member
I have hope to hear any info about any other features beyond "updating/optimizing IDE", as having only "updated IDE" for next year isn't a big progress. Addons for sequences were a part of that hope, but 1-2 features more would be more welcome.
Except those are "secret" for now and they want "over deliver" them :)
 

rmanthorp

GameMaker Staff
Admin
GameMaker Dev.
Thanks, guys! I appreciate the honest feedback. We knew that we didn't have all of the concrete information and answers to give out and that's because in a lot of these cases we don't fully know yet. This was about an introduction and assurance of the things we do know. We are staffing up and getting more resources thrown at GameMaker. More features and improvements to 2.3 as well as localisations are coming soon. Spine is coming! We are working hard on an overhaul of the Marketplace and a fresh new website design coming soon! We won't be forcing Opera GX on our users nor will the focus of GM shift to HTML5. We are evaluating pricing but we don't have any plans at the moment. We are very strict about privacy and the data we hold. These are the main things that we can confirm and are happy to share. We are all happy with how it went and look forward to more in the future!

Now time for some rest 😁!
 

kburkhart84

Firehammer Games
I saw the same thing as you guys did...and yes, it did feel a little short to me too. It was well done in a general sense though. I personally had no lag or anything like that.

As far as communicating to us what is coming as far as features/roadmap...I'm seriously hoping they take my idea, and be nice and open, and feel free to tease new features, just making sure to not promise dates, and to make sure it is clear what is priority, etc... And if developers try to depend on things that aren't promised, then that is on them.
 

JeffJ

Member
One thing to also consider - while I understand the mentality of not wanting to tell about something until you're confident, the downside of that is, if you're developing something in a bubble that you think is really cool, but in practice a lot of your customers won't like, then by the time you do decide to communicate it to your community, it will be too late to change it based on their feedback. Look at the chained workspace design as an example. And this is coming from someone who saw the very first private stream of it, back in the Zeus days - even back then, my question about the chains was outright ignored by Mike (in spite of the stream mod actually reiterating the question to him from chat). That was literally the earliest possible opportunity I had, as a privileged developer, to speak out against it - but even by then, it was already too late, because chains were going to happen - they had already happened. Now, we have suffered that decision for years, and you guys are going to have to do a lot of fundamental rework to undo it and give us an alternative - time you could have spent on other, cooler things (and I doubt this kind of work will be fun for any of you, on top of everything).

TLDR: to avoid that in the future, you might want to consider going the opposite direction - the sooner you involve your community, the higher the chance you won't repeat similar mistakes. It will save everyone so much time and pain.
 
T

Temporal333

Guest
ways to avoid answering interview questions:
- Ignoring the question
- Acknowledging the question without answering it
 

gnysek

Member
Yeah, chains in workflow and file structure in JSON was criticized since first day and still we need to deal with it every day. Of course JSON got lot of fixes in 2.3, but that's a good examample of what happens if you won't share for too long.
 

JeffJ

Member
Exactly. I think all of us understands that plans change sometimes, for whatever reason - it's fine that not everything on the roadmap is set in stone. That's not what this is about. But involve us, especially in the consideration / early design phases of coming stuff, so that the process becomes iterative and we may avoid this happening in the future. That's all. I really think everyone, community and YoYoGames, will be better off for it.
 

rmanthorp

GameMaker Staff
Admin
GameMaker Dev.
Oh 100% It's a tightrope walk and we don't want to go too far in any direction with that. We know the value in listening to the community but also as displayed in the call. We can't listen to everything. 3D support came up a lot and while we are not saying no - we are saying our focus is on 2D. That makes a lot of people happy because some believe that we should ONLY ever focus on 2D and never want to see 3D support. Yet a lot of people ask for 3D support.

Before I log off for the evening I believe this should be the recording that Zoom gave out! For anyone that missed it :) Thanks again! https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ftshJ_9GdnB4LAC1KytqTV82ibK4deKo/view
 

JeffJ

Member
Of course, and I for one am super happy that you maintain your focus on 2d, despite how many people are asking for 3d. Don't try and turn a screwdriver into a hammer. I applaud and respect that.

But again, it's simply about letting us know what goes in the minds of YYG before you're knee deep in a design and/or development phase that can't easily be changed based on our feedback. It's such a small and simple thing, but it really can make a world of difference. That's all that I (and I think most of us) mean by transparency. We're not asking you to carve the roadmap in stone, just give us a chance to know what's coming, so we know when to cheer and when to find the rotten tomatoes.

Alright Ross, go away now, your workday has already been too long as it is! 😆
 

drandula

Member
3D support came up a lot and while we are not saying no - we are saying our focus is on 2D. That makes a lot of people happy because some believe that we should ONLY ever focus on 2D and never want to see 3D support. Yet a lot of people ask for 3D support.
Yeah, I don't GMS to try compete with Unity or UE4 with 3D.
But I want more 3D maneuverability, not for making 3D games, but support making 2D games. There are things which are easier when 3D is included.
 

gnysek

Member
We all know that 2D games might use 3d in some way - platformer with perspective, or 3d models for characters, or some shadows, so some small support isn't bad, but for sure that shouldn't be a priority.
 

GMWolf

aka fel666
3D support is an odd one because people assume that there is a lot of magic to 3d, when in fact its all just vertex buffers and shaders, stuff we already have access to.

What i would love to see is more modern api features. I would love to have graphics buffers (uavs, srvs, etc) and compute shaders.
A lot of the lighting systems I see around are borderline objectionable to me knowing how much better we can do on even 10 year old GPUs.

I would also love to see a C api be exposed. we already have a tiny api for data structure manipulation, i think it would be nice to have a full api available (like the one that generated C++ uses). although i fully understand that stabilizing an API would potentially limit both feature and GML development in the future.


I do think its a shame there is such a strong emphasis on feature requests, i feel like those concerns could have been better addressed in a dedicated forum post of call, as i would have liked to hear more about Operas role and what direction they will steer YYG in, if any.
As it stands it sounds like the exact relationship between YYG and Opera is still being worked out.

Overall i am happy to see more transparency, and am eager to hear more about the relationship between GX and GMS as it gets worked out.
 
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FrostyCat

Redemption Seeker
I'm a little disappointed at the lack of depth in the discussion, but there is a limit to how much content can fit in a 30-minute session.

It's nice to know that Marketplace is being revamped in the background, but there's only so much that can be fixed if the code rot in the offerings remains unaddressed. I was looking for lighting engines on the Marketplace earlier this month, and the results were just disappointing. Most do not run natively on GMS 2.3+, and some of the ones that are paid for have been flooded with negative reviews about not working at all on GMS 2.3+. On top of the technical work on the site itself (which I do not deny the importance of), there needs to be better work in curating a critical mass of products available to the latest stable version.

A translation to Chinese is a reasonable attempt to expand the market, but it rings hollow when:
  • IME support in the IDE and runner remains substandard
  • Surface-based fonts are still routinely recommended to CJK language users (especially "add characters from your alphabet into the font resource")
  • There is no real support for Android analytics and monetization that are outside Google's ecosystem
  • The question of CTL and RTL languages remains an elephant in the room
It would be a great day when I am no longer the only one fielding questions on how to render CJK text properly (which I am qualified to discuss) or standing in for right-to-left Hebrew and Arabic text (which I certainly am not).

Like JeffJ, I remain concerned about the groupthink within YoYo's office, which is clearly showing through in the zoom session. There are much more important things to fix at the current point of GMS's development than such vanities as new website designs or more gung-ho expansion on sequences. I would love to see more staff visiting GMC grounds (especially the extension developer) or involvement of experienced GMC focus groups to help break that groupthink and expose actual current needs.
 

kburkhart84

Firehammer Games
The main thing with 3d support people want isn't so much like them implementing model loading and animation. It's more like them giving us access to the full pipeline where possible. Previously for example, we had no shaders. You were extremely limited on what you could do with that. Things like adding the Window handle access function helped at a time. But direct access to buffers(as mentioned above) is part of the things we are missing, and things that force certain limitations on what we can even add to the 3d stuff. We don't want the 3d features so much....we want the exposure to the internals so we can make them ourselves...that's all that can be expected from a perspective of the 2d focus this software is on.
 

JeffJ

Member
I agree with GMWolf and kburkhart, by all means, expose as much of that stuff to us as possible. A lot of that can be used for 2d just as much. I'm all for that.

Where I would be amiss, is if they focused on stuff like 3d room editors, built in model handling, etc. - actual 3d tools built by YYG for use in developing 3d games.
 
They might focus on 2D, but no way will they avoid adding 3D. 3D will eventually happen with time, even if it is 10 years from now lol. It might not be great 3D, but as long as I can make Pikmin for Gamecube, or Ocarina of Time for 64, then I and many others will be happy lmao. Releasing Gamecube or Nintendo 64 quality 3D games onto Steam would be awesome. And I believe that making 3D games in GM would be the easiest engine to make a 3D game, simply because the syntax is short, the manual is easy to understand, GML is simple, and the IDE is very user friendly.

I am happy to see a new hire dedicated to updating extensions such as Spine. I thought we wouldn't get a Spine update for a few more years.

The video was great overall. :)
 

Yal

🐧 *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
The main thing with 3d support people want isn't so much like them implementing model loading and animation. It's more like them giving us access to the full pipeline where possible. Previously for example, we had no shaders. You were extremely limited on what you could do with that. Things like adding the Window handle access function helped at a time. But direct access to buffers(as mentioned above) is part of the things we are missing, and things that force certain limitations on what we can even add to the 3d stuff. We don't want the 3d features so much....we want the exposure to the internals so we can make them ourselves...that's all that can be expected from a perspective of the 2d focus this software is on.
Indeed... even the old GL ES version used in GMS1 had support for cubemaps, for instance, but GM doesn't have support for them so you can't use them in your shaders.

For 3D, there's already some stellar work being made with the tools currently present:
IMO the best course of action for the Yoyo / GM / 3D combination space would be something like, Yoyo contacts these devs and asks about what they struggled the most with, then adds any fixes/features that would also benefit 2D games into the big pile of secret new features when Sandy Krystian isn't looking. Maybe also promote the extensions as official GM 3D examples on the New Super Marketplace as a way of washing their hands clean of this 3D stuff, I'm pretty sure most users won't care whether the cool code that lets them make the next Super Ocarina of Silent Hill 64 is compiled C++ native to GM or GML/GL written used the 2D tools.
 

kburkhart84

Firehammer Games
@Yal I guess since I'm one of the people in this topic mentioning this(despite the fact that I'm not really one of the guys doing the 3d stuff, rather just vouching for the needs), Russell directly asked me what we are looking for as far as exposure. I've included the following things in my responses. Feel free to add more and I'll shoot them his way.

updated shaders
Geometry Shaders
Exposure of Shader compilation and upload(maybe integrating the build-time converter via extension)
Texture reading in vertex buffer(if it doesn't get added via updated shaders)
3d textures
cubemaps
GLSL ES MRTs(if not included in shader updates)
Stencil buffer access
 

Shut

Member
They might focus on 2D, but no way will they avoid adding 3D. 3D will eventually happen with time, even if it is 10 years from now lol. It might not be great 3D, but as long as I can make Pikmin for Gamecube, or Ocarina of Time for 64, then I and many others will be happy lmao. Releasing Gamecube or Nintendo 64 quality 3D games onto Steam would be awesome. And I believe that making 3D games in GM would be the easiest engine to make a 3D game, simply because the syntax is short, the manual is easy to understand, GML is simple, and the IDE is very user friendly.

I am happy to see a new hire dedicated to updating extensions such as Spine. I thought we wouldn't get a Spine update for a few more years.

The video was great overall. :)
I completely agree that sooner or later GM will have to improve on 3D. There's not much you can keep adding to 2D for years.. especially if you're trying to grow your userbase. I've been a GM user since 2001 and honestly the whole "focusing on being the best in 2D" thing should be dropped, and this is coming from someone who's planning to stick to 2D game development. The reason why is because there are already several 2D+3D combined game engines that offer a lot more in just 2D than GM right now, it's far from being the best in 2D if we are being honest here. Instead move the focus to being the most user friendly engine out there, that's what made GM popular back then and I'm sure it is still its strongest point.

3D shouldn't be the top priority right now, because there's still a lot to be done to make it at least one of the best 2D engines out there, but completely ignoring it won't work out either. Most of the users here don't want to see 3D being improved because they're afraid it's further going to slow down the overall progress and introduce a whole new wave of bugs.. but as long as they hire enough people and introduce some user friendly 3D tools maybe it would at least double the userbase and their revenue considering some people are just ignoring the engine completely because it doesn't offer any 3D functionality for beginners.
 

Yal

🐧 *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
@Yal I guess since I'm one of the people in this topic mentioning this(despite the fact that I'm not really one of the guys doing the 3d stuff, rather just vouching for the needs), Russell directly asked me what we are looking for as far as exposure. I've included the following things in my responses. Feel free to add more and I'll shoot them his way.
I don't know enough about 3D to know what to ask for, really... which is why I'm so loud about getting better 3D support for GM so I don't need to know everything myself :p
But maybe @TheSnidr or @Joe Ellis have something to add?

Texture reading in vertex buffer(if it doesn't get added via updated shaders)
Oh yeah, I second this. I had to scrap an implementation of a thing after realizing you can't sample in the vertex shaders (the GL ES specification allows zero to eight samplers to be available in the vertex shader which is just stupid)

Seconding cubemaps as well, you lose out on a lot of important lightning features without them.
 
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